In Down in the bottomlands, Turtledove explores a world where there's an almost uninhabitable bottomland that tourists lke to explore. But what would happen if terrorists planned to fill the historically dray bottmlands with water by knocking down the mountains around the bottomlands with a bomb? In The Wheels of If, a man is launched onto his "Wheel of If", and into a conditional world where Indians (Screllings) rule and the white man JUST coexist. In The Pugnacious Peacemaker, we're aken again into the world set out in The Wheel of If. This is a great story that'll teach you a thing or two not only about the history of today but also about the history of lands that don't really exist.